Money Savings Tips for College Students
How To Easily Get Started In Investing For Your Future
August 13, 2020 | Sage Capone
Interview with Rachel Kamita in 2016
Hello Sage,
I am writing an article about what students should be doing with their money or should start doing with their money.
Knowing that students don’t have much money, probably working part-time and also have debt, I was wondering what should students be doing or preparing to do for their futures. Do you have any tips that can help college students get off on the right foot to be financially stable down the road.
Other than the usual tips like budgeting and saving up the money that they have, what other tips should students do. (ex. open a roth account and adding in what ever they can every month)
Thank you for your time. I look forward form hearing from you.
______________________________
Rachel,
Great questions. Personal financial planning is fun! Turning our life goals into intelligent financial goals for the future can be daunting at first, but the best decisions we make at a young age.
- The first thing you should do, is write down your financial goals! I know this sounds generic, but each one of us should sit down and create a separate list of goals that pertain to your personal finances.
- Short term goals achieved in 1 year, medium term goals achieved in 2-5 years, and long-term goals that are completed in 5 years and beyond.
Once the list is created and analyzed, take action! Each person’s goals are different. Don’t stop there. Keep going and make it fun.
- Create personal financial statements, ratios and cash budgets to successfully attain all financial goals! Income/expense statement, balance statement, and cash flow statement. The free excel templates are very easy to understand.
If that sounds intimidating and you’re not willing to put in the time, my suggestion would be to use a phone application. My go to application, is DayCost on the iPhone App Store.
This App allows you to you to add income and expense logs that create budgets for personal categories. I highly suggest students to download this application to manage your day-to-day income and expenses.
After you take those steps and you’re saving money first, look at opening a individual retirement plan (IRA). Go to your local bank, brokerage company or credit union to open an IRS approved IRA.
A Roth IRA is a great option to open at a brokerage account online, helping you manage your account independently with the free research provided by the brokerage account.
The benefit of opening a ROTH IRA is that your contributions can grow tax-free and you can generally make withdrawals tax-free and penalty-free, after you reach 59 1/2 and the account was open for 5 years.
Websites such as Morning Star, provide free research for you to make intelligent selections with your investments. No fee Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) are great options for students that want to manage their own portfolio.
Hopefully, I provided you with some good suggestions for college students. Budgeting and managing my money wisely came naturally, but saving a high percentage never did because I tended to spend more than I should have.
Personal finance in college taught me ways to make my money work for my investments and most importantly the importance of saving for my retirement now. I thoroughly enjoy helping clients make financial decisions that will benefit them and their family.
Have a great weekend,
Sage
Click Here to read the article written by Rachel Kamita, Staff Writer at Chaminade University of Honolulu.
